Wizards blow fourth quarter lead, fall to Pelicans, 107-105.

John Wall’s red hot December continues as the Wallstar goes for 26 points, 12 assists, and 5 rebounds but it’s not enough as the Wizards blow a fourth quarter lead and lose to the Pelicans, 107-105.

Jared Dudley knocked home a corner three with 10 minutes to play stretching the Wizards lead to 9, 86-77. The Wizards were able to maintain a seven point cushion with some nice pick and roll play from John Wall and DeJuan Blair. Yes, DeJuan Blair got fourth quarter minutes tonight.

Tyreke Evans got hot from three point range knocking down three three-pointers in the fourth quarter to tie the game at 98 with 4:10 to play. Ish Smith and Anthony Davis hit some timely buckets for the Pelicans as they pull away and win this one, 107-105.

Takeaways:

The Wizards were not very good at defending the three pointer tonight: Tyreke Evans went 5-6 from long range tonight and Jrue Holiday went 5-7 including a half-court shot to end the first quarter. The Pelicans were 16-27 from deep tonight, many on wide open attempts and many of those attempts coming in the fourth quarter.

Free Throw Shooting: The free throw shooting woes continue for this team. The Wizards have no problem getting to the line; it’s knocking them down when they get there. The Wizards shot 13-21 (62 percent) from the charity stripe tonight. For a team that’s struggling and has cut back on their turnovers, that would have helped them win a road game like tonight. But it didn’t.

Fourth quarter lineups didn’t make much sense: The Wizards started the quarter with Blair at the center position. The Wiz went small ball with Wall-Neal-Sessions-Porter-Dudley from the 6 minute mark to the 1 minute mark. With one minute remaining, Wittman brought in Gortat for the remainder of the game and took Dudley out. The injury bug is really hurting this team and on top of that, the coaching staff is getting a bit too romantic with the super small ball lineups.